Convicted serial rapist set to die Wednesday for killing teacher

MICHAEL GRACZYK

Published
6:00 pm CST, Monday, November 7, 2005

Associated Press Writer

The kids who were second-graders in 1993 in suburban Houston's Klein Independent School District are out of high school now, in college or elsewhere, but the handwritten notes some of them scrawled back then still reveal the emotional scars of that school year.

Their teacher at Benfer Elementary School, Karen Gail Crawford, had been attacked the Wednesday before Easter outside her apartment in Tomball in northwest Harris County. Two days later, she died.

The man convicted of killing her, Charles Daniel Thacker, is set for lethal injection Wednesday evening. He would be the 17th condemned Texas inmate put to death this year.

"I'd forgotten until I opened the file and started pulling out these children's notebook papers," said Joe Owmby, the Harris County district attorney who prosecuted Thacker. "It brought all that back to me, how devastating it was for them."

Prosecutors declined to release the contents of the notes, which never were in evidence in the case, except to say they were "expressions of emotion" that illustrated the children's sadness in the aftermath of their 26-year-old teacher's strangling during an attempted rape, according to Jack Roady, an assistant district attorney.

Thacker, now 37, had a history of sexual assaults. At the time of the April 1993 attack on Crawford he'd been out of prison about eight months after serving less than four years of two 12-year sentences for robbery and sexual assault.

Thacker's lawyers were in the courts trying to get a reprieve so more sophisticated DNA tests not available at the time of his trial could be conducted on evidence.

"Thacker has maintained his innocence throughout the process," Robin Norris, one of his attorneys, said while acknowledging Thacker's "fairly long history as a sexual predator."

Another appeal challenged Texas execution procedures, contending prison authorities should ensure the condemned inmate is unconscious before the actual lethal drugs, which they argue are unconstitutionally painful, are administered.

And a third appeal questioned whether Thacker's death sentence should be reconsidered in light of a new state law that took effect Sept. 1 that allows capital murder juries to consider life without parole for offenders they convict.

"Texas has effectively abolished the death penalty for everybody except those people who can't be safely confined in prison," lawyer Richard Bourke said, referring to jury deliberations about whether a capital murder convict would be a future danger. Thacker, he said, "has never been a problem in prison."

The Loraine County, Ohio, native was arrested in the hours after the attack on Crawford, who was dragged into a restroom near the central mailbox rack at her apartment complex. A passer-by who spotted a key dangling from Crawford's open mailbox prompted a search for her. Crawford's car with her dog inside wasn't far away.

A maintenance worker found the woman's restroom nearby locked but was surprised to hear a male voice from inside. When the door burst open, the worker got a blast of pepper spray from the fleeing man, whom he later identified as Thacker.

Other residents who chased the man as he ran into a wooded area also said it was Thacker. Crawford was found unconscious in the restroom. Police using tracking dogs found Thacker hiding in a yard.

"I was there that night or could say I was near there in the back behind the apartments in a rich neighborhood of homes," Thacker said on a Web site where condemned inmates seek pen pals. "I was up to no good with two others guys looking for stuff to steal and sell."

There was no evidence of others involved. Thacker's truck was found in the apartment complex parking lot, and witnesses reported seeing him loitering in the area before the attack.

On his Web site, Thacker suggested Crawford accidentally died because of CPR efforts.

At least six victims, ranging in age from 13 to 64, testified at his trial how he sexually assaulted them, or attempted to, including a Tomball woman abducted while she was picking up mail at her apartment complex.

Two more condemned Texas inmates are scheduled to die next week and another in December in the nation's busiest death chamber. At least five have execution dates for early next year.